A scarcely perceptible line deepened about his fine mouth.
"Don't promise rashly, dear. And remember, I said, whatever it costs——"
It became very still about them. The tramp of feet and the rattle of drums grew muffled and rumbled into silence. They could see the column wind its way up in and out of the broken avenue of trees like a monstrous glittering serpent. The dust sank back peacefully in golden particles, and with the deepening silence there came a sense of relief, of healing. The vague spirit of irritation and opposition laid itself.
Tristram drank in the silence. In that subconscious self where no thought or desire is formulated, he prayed for its continuation. He held himself motionless so that no movement of his should rouse his companion from her seeming abstraction. For a moment, she had relaxed her hold of him and he shrank back into himself, into a loneliness where he seemed to draw breath, to lay down a burden which he never acknowledged, and to stretch his cramped soul in exquisite relief. The perfumed air, the golden lights and splendid purples of a brief twilight penetrated below his senses, and with light, magic fingers opened the closed doors behind which he had imprisoned all that the woman beside him could not understand, all that was repugnant to her. They came out, these ghostly figures of his fancy, and played before him. At first they had been pale and wan, but as they drew in light and air, they regained their youth and glowed with their old splendour. He watched them, fascinated. His blood began to move more swiftly. A thought shaped itself out of the depths—the thought of the nights and days out there on the fringe of the jungle—of the work that would claim him back—of life as it might still be to him. Service! that remained.
He felt Anne's fingers tighten on his arm.
"Look!" she said.
The scorn and anger in her voice stung him. The lights grew suddenly dim and the fancies faded. He looked the way she pointed, and his pulses stood still. Two riders were coming slowly down the hill towards them. Their white-clad figures shone ghostly in the shadow of the trees. They came on, up to the gates. Tristram's pulses resumed their beating, heavily, suffocatingly. His hand went up to his helmet, and the fair-haired woman on the Arab bowed with grave indifference. The man beside her smiled, showing his white teeth. Then it was over. He heard the man's voice break on the silence—he was making some ironic comment—and then the beat of horses' hoofs at a mad gallop.
Anne's eyes were on his face.
"Tris, how could you!" she said bitterly.
He turned and looked at her. He felt stupid and heavy, as though some one had struck him between the eyes; but even then he realized her expression, the unbreakable will showing through the mask of her femininity.